Jenna Bush Hager learned a lot from her former Today With Hoda & Jenna cohost, Hoda Kotb.
“I mean, I think the most important lesson that she taught me was about positivity,” Bush Hager, 43, exclusively told Us Weekly on March 12. “She was such a good leader because she was so joyful all the time, and that really is her natural state.”
Bush Hager took over as Kotb’s fourth hour cohost in 2019, after former cohost Kathy Lee Gifford left the program. The pair worked side-by-side on Today With Hoda & Jenna until January 2025, when Kotb left Today.
“I just turned 60, and it was such a monumental moment for me when I turned 60 years old because I started thinking about that decade, like, what does that decade mean? What does it hold? What’s it gonna have for me?” Kotb tearfully announced on-air in September 2024. “And I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60 and to try something new.”
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Bush Hager now cohosts Today With Jenna & Friends alongside a revolving cast of celebrity cohosts. She told Us that she uses the lessons Kotb imparted, and the things they have in common, to help guide her as the show goes on.
“We had similar personalities, but now that it’s just me, it’s like I do feel like I need to make sure I’m thanking all of our amazing producers, and I am giving people credit and emailing when people have done incredible work,” she explained. “So it’s just realizing that as a leader, it matters what my disposition is. And luckily, it is my natural disposition to be sort of joyful.”
She continued, “We laugh so much, and I’m obsessed with everybody that I work with, which is such a gift.”
While Bush Hager admits that “when Hoda left, I was sad,” she acknowledged that at Today and NBC she has “this whole team of people that have my back.”
“So I would say that’s what she taught me – that joy is contagious and it’s important to thank people and to be a leader that acknowledges everybody’s hard work,” she added.
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To date, Bush Hager has hosted alongside a slew of Hollywood A-listers, including Taraji P. Henson, Eva Longoria, Keke Palmer, Scarlett Johansson, Kelsea Ballerini and Ciara. While she told Us that she is “having a blast right now” she believes “we will have something more permanent” in terms of a cohost in the near future.
“Every day it changes,” she said of the show’s current format. “It also has been a really good lesson in living in the present. It’s, like, I actually have no idea what this show is going to look like. We are booked through basically the spring and early summer, so yeah, I guess I have some idea of what it’s going to look like through the spring. But after that we’re, like, could we have a permanent co-host? Sure. Could we keep doing this? Sure.”
Bush Hager added, “It’s kind of fun because obviously, after almost six years of doing the show with somebody who I adored so much, I knew what every single day was going to look like to some extent. I had this real constant and a partner. So it’s kind of fun to be like, OK, what’s going to happen tomorrow? I have no idea what’s going to happen in June. I have no idea. And it’s been a lot. It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of fun.”
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
